SimplyTapp launches open source tokenization project

A new open source software project designed to help banks offer tokenized card payments has been launched by HCE specialist SimplyTapp. “We feel the accessibility and control of current offerings are pretty restrictive and there is a need for a more open and transparent approach,” CEO Doug Yeager told NFC World. “It’s kind of like the referee has decided to play in the game in some cases.”

YEAGER: “Accessibility and control of current offerings is pretty restrictive”

“We view tokenization as an enabler for cloud-based payments,” Yeager explained. “From a pricing and availability and lack of control standpoint, current offerings out there are barring the entry to cloud-based payments for value-conscious banks and we wanted to make sure there was an alternative.

“We don’t want to put any hindrance in the way of a bank launching cloud-based payments because they have to buy or rely on another ecosystem player for new technology and so we thought it was a perfect use case for an open source project. Open source allows a perfect line of audit where you can actually see the source code, modify the source code and make updates to the source code for your environment before you’re running it.

“What we’re going to do long-term, once we get over a certain number of contributors, is to automate that process so anyone can basically come in, view the project, download the project for their own use or contribute back to it. We want to make sure that everyone is comfortable and familiar with tokenization and has access to all of the software they need to run tokenization for their own purposes.

“There are a lot additions that can be added to the EMVco token service provider that are specific to various supporting systems and that’s another main reason for the open source aspect because, as banks need to add certain features, those can be contributed back to the community.

“A lot of things with tokenization rely on adapters,” Yeager explained. “This is new software running the token vault and a token service provider [TSP], and in a lot of cases, it’s a big deal for an old arcane infrastructure to talk to a new piece of software.

“I think what we’ll see, as the project evolves, there are a certain subset of adapter modules being contributed into the token service provider that’s available today. We are starting with the TSP as EMV has defined it and we’re getting a few issuers and processors contributing now so that it can become useful for the greater community as it grows.”